The PA Report - How Valve “devalued” video games, and why that’s great news for developers and players.Those seem to be wise words, and gamers are increasingly sensitive to the price of the games they play, but when you look at the data you see that Valve has done something magical: The company has found a way to charge less, and earn more. This isn’t a purely selfish move, as developers also praise the pricing structure of these sales. The issue of game pricing is much more complex, and mysterious, than most are willing to admit.

Wired.com - We Don't Need Game Publishers, Hardware Makers or Retailers.But something critical has changed. While publishers, retailers and hardware makers might still be adding value, they are no longer required. Using the miracle of the internet, game creators can make videogames — good ones! — and sell them to game players without any involvement from traditional publishers, retailers or hardware makers. And when creators don’t have to put their work through the gauntlet of middlemen, with everybody down the line taking their cut of the profits, they can sell those games much more cheaply.

eRe4s3r wrote on Apr 18, 2012, 23:41:I wonder how many people know that 95% of all started game projects fail to even produce a release?

And how many of that 95% fail because an idiot publisher fucks things up?

Theres thousands of Indy projects that fail because they run out of money, have no skill or planning etc. So if anything Kickstarter at least allows them to *maybe* finish the game to get skill and planning etc...

Right. It's a much bigger risk backing a completely new team versus a group like Fargo's or Weisman's, who have (even in their current iteration) released a lot of games, and have been in the business for yonks.

If you back some new guys, you get to see them blow 20% of their entire kickstart budget on a trip to fucking PAX East and some iPads.

So in that regard, I think Kickstarter does something good. The problem is Kickstarter is still US centric and it needs to get International ASAP. I even think Kickstarter should start to actually handle posters and t-shirts because this is the kind of stuff that can KILL 20k $ projects instantly. T-Shirts are cheap, shipping 600 of them is not.

But again, the $15 backers usually don't get a t-shirt or a booklet or whatever. Those are rewards for the higher tiers. If they didn't do rewards for the higher tiers, everyone would just pay $15. Instead they get people to pay $35 or $50. For that extra 20 or 35 bucks, they can afford to spend 10 bucks on some swag and 5 bucks on shipping, and still come out with MORE money than they would have had had that backer only paid $15.

As for it going international, there's probably a ton of international regulations that Kickstarter would run afoul of, not to mention the really tricky swamp that's international income taxes, etc. Probably much easier to keep it all in the US (even if backers can be international, the taxes still get paid here.)